#136 Dave Davies / Economic History of Grateful Dead / A Decade of Shows / Entertainment Finance

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together and we're Live. Dave Davis. Davis, welcome. How are you? I'm great Efren, how are you? I'm doing great. I am excited to talk to you and I really appreciate the quick turn around time. I reached out to you on Sunday, today's Wednesday, and I already started the book and and I, you know, I reached out to you because I saw that you wrote this great book called Economic History of the Grateful Dead.

0:41 And this was the day after I found I discovered your book the day after Bob Weir died, unfortunately, and I had to just reach out and I wanted to kind of have a laid back podcast talk to you about some of your dead memories, writing the book, what you learned about writing the book and the, you know, the perspective that you had. And, and then and then the bonus feature is that your entire professional career, other than this great work of, of information has been an industry that I'm particularly fascinated and that's the entertainment finance. So I'm excited to talk with you. Well. Let's do it. OK, beautiful. So take which, where, where do you want to start? You want to start talking about your, I guess your introduction to the dead and their music and some of your experiences. You want to start with writing the book. How do you want to start this?

1:29 Yeah, I I'll just do it chronologically. So when, when I was 16 in 1975 was the first time I saw Jerry Garcia play. And where? Were you? Where were you living? I was living in in Andover, MA, right outside Boston and in the starting in 1976, I, I saw the Grateful Dead over over mostly a 10 year period. I saw them 82 times. I I kind of stopped in the mid 80s because it wasn't as fun, but times over over 10 years. I bet, I bet, I bet.

2:13 I've heard that from a lot of people. I heard that from the mid 80s especially because it got so, so packed and, and, and the venues got so enormous that it became harder to maintain that kind of feel. From for their last ten years, the dead were like almost every year they were the top the top box office attraction in the United States, so. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, nothing really gets more authentic, especially like as you get these hints and whispers and leftovers from the 60s and 70s. You know, like I think that that kind of became romanticized and became this whole little culture that people wanted to partake in, whether it was, you know, quote UN quote authentic or not. But you know, people were want to participate in it. Well, Jerry was still there.

2:57 So I think it's authentic that whole period, the last just that they they were so tremendous when I was younger in in the late 70s and the early 80s. It's just they were so tremendous. I didn't even want to see them so much after they got huge. And plus I saw, I saw the Grateful Dead play in places of 2004 thousand people you know, instead of 50,000 and 70,000. Yeah, it's those those those those smaller shows are always better. I went to, I mean, I went, I, I, I prefer to go to, I live in Hollywood, FL, South Florida and there's a Hard Rock venue here with about 5 to 7000 seats maybe.

3:44 And the acts there are top tier acts that typically would go around to stadiums. But it's a real privilege to get to see whoever that, whoever it is play there. You know, I've seen, I took my wife to see John Fogerty there. We, I, I know that that Springsteen was playing there, but his tickets were like 1200 bucks apiece just to walk in the door. And that's the that's the problem with having these limited venues with such a big act. Yeah, but a lot of big acts like to play at a small venue if they can, and especially back to that. Yeah, it was. There's, there were all kinds of interesting ideas like the, the, the dead between when they started in 65 and then by the time 71 rolled around, which is pretty early, they're, they were getting 5000 bucks a night and playing places like the Felmore East and that kind of thing. And so already they were making was what they thought at the time was a really good amount of money. I mean, you can't even compare what bands make now, you know, like Taylor Swift tour or Bruno Mars tour or whatever. You can't even compare that to how the world was back in the 70s and 80s.

5:01 Yeah, because we found we, we have never ending ways, excuse me, of sucking value out of consumers. So, and, and we became much more creative with our ability to, to really, I guess, merchandise. And you make that point in the book about how the dead really, you know, the whole, the whole entertainment industry was really at his infancy. And the dead were Trail Blazers and so many different ways of, you know, T-shirts and merch and mailing lists and, and all this. And people would camp out by the concerts and, and have these booths with it sell their stick and, and all this cute stuff. That was all really to encourage. And you know, actually something I meant to, I meant to ask that I've always and curious about, you know, I go to I go to Dead Cover band or I go see Dark Star or J Rad or something like that.

5:50 And they sell their concert posters for, you know, 50 bucks apiece or their T-shirts for 45 bucks. Now I know I sound like I'm complaining, but that almost sounds convoluted almost to the spirit of what the Dead were with so much free stuff and so much family. Or I almost felt like a family more than a business. But I then I think back to, well, if the concert tickets were, I don't know, $20 a ticket pre inflation in the 1960s and 1970s, that's not very cheap to go to a concert, right? No. No, no, they weren't 20. They were. They were. They weren't $20 till the 90s. Wow, OK but but Even so, let's say in the 60s and 70s or selling tickets for three 4-5 bucks. Yeah, for sure.

6:38 In the 60s and when I first saw the dead in 7677, I like $6, seven dollars. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And So what do you think that would be to people today post inflate, you know, to to kind of match with match with inflation? You think that'd be like paying 40-50 bucks? You know, even if there were four or five times as much, I mean, that's what I mean. It's just that tickets are just so expensive to see any band nowadays. And then on that, we didn't have things like, you know, service fees, yadda, yadda, yadda fees. Yeah, I have a friend that's in the ticket industry and he says that he goes, you want, you want to open up a world of corruption, You want to open up a can of worms, slide down, slide into the ticket, the ticket business. He says that he knows of some big companies that personally buy tickets to concerts as the brokers and resell them as ticket sellers.

7:40 And I mean, that's like the S&P holding stocks and then deciding who, you know, inside any kind of trade, you know? That's well, the music business has always been known as like somewhat shady finances and all kinds of issues. Like, I mean, there's a, there's a good, there's a good story in my book about there was a concert up in Maine in 1980 in Lewiston, ME. It was the biggest concert of the year. And the Dead got paid $100,000, which was the most they got paid at any show that year. And I think it drew 25,000 at 10 bucks or something 25,000. But it was there were two promoters of this.

8:24 One was the local Maine promoter who was just a normal guy. And the other promoter was this guy that it turned out later was a huge marijuana supplier in Maine who would fly in in private airplanes from the Caribbean in Britain. And that's what finances that concert. And the the promoters lost like $75,000 on that concert. And later on, they reported that they had lost $100,000 when they were when they were arrested. Oh, yeah. We, we, we've laundered the money into rock concerts like the Grateful Dead and Lewis that made.

9:07 And it's like it's fascinating that that the, the kind of people that were involved in the music business even back then. So. Yeah. Yeah, there was. I mean, that's the entire entertainment world was really filled with financial corruption. I've read a couple of books about that, about Hollywood's studio heads taking creative liberties with with budgets and such like and such. But yeah, I what's so funny is it feels to me that even though the dead by almost unanimous accounts, you know, really were not manipulative, especially with money in any way, shape or form, and they prefer to lose money or get ripped off rather than participate in that. Then, you know, even though they themselves could kind of keep their hands clean or say that they never did anything wrong. I'm sure there's a lot of weird stuff going on, going on all around them, right?

10:06 There was, but I mean, they were smart as early as they could to partner with people that they've been working with for like a long time. So jump here was the East Coast, northeast New England New Jersey promoter. What was his name? John Shear. John Shear got you. Yeah. Still around a little bit, but Sean did, they did the, they, they, they, they promoted all the shows outside of the Bay Area starting in 7576 for like a 20 year period.

10:48 And they, I looked at, when I was able to look at documents for like the Grateful Dead's concert economics, individual shows and all this stuff like that. They were so good at being precise and so fair and honest. So like it was unusual in the music business because Scheer and, and Monarch Entertainment, they, they, they were, they were honest. And so the Dead did business with them for 20 years. And it was like it was, it was basically the split of the revenue that shows between the Dead and the promoters. And they were their promoters outside of the area. So, so that, that that was a great experience for them. And I, and I give them a lot of in my, in my book, I talk about them a lot about how how Monarch was just so good at being fair and came up with creative ideas and booked him in the right size venues and all this.

11:48 And then there was a known famed promoter in the Bay Area named Bill Graham. The. Legendary The legendary Bill Graham. Legendary guy. And there's a lot of evidence that Bill kind of ripped off the bed a little bit. Yeah, well, he he would justify it, but he did OK. So, but Bill also was so good at promoting them that they get to play in bigger venues. They would make more money. So I think he would. And you know, I'm getting these guys a lot of money. I'm going to take my piece. So I mean, they would have a little dispute every once in a while, the debt management and, and, and Bill Graham.

12:32 But it's hard for me to call him like unethical or compared to other people in the business or, you know, or ripping them off, even things like that, because he also made them a lot of money by the way he promoted them and marketed them in the Bay Area. Like I moved to Berkeley in 1980. And so by first, you know, 40 times I saw the Grateful Dead was on the East Coast prior to that between 76 and 80 and 80. And then all the shows I saw after that were in, in either in San Francisco, Oakland or Berkeley for the my last, you know, 44 shows or whatever. They would play so often.

13:29 And he knew exactly how many times they could play and where they'd sell out. And like, so, I mean, I can't really give him any grief, even though he, you know, he might have fudged some creative. Liberties. So yeah, yeah, I want to hear, I want to hear a couple of things go back a little bit first. So first of all, how do your parents feel or your family feel about your newfound fascination with this, with this band? And I know that not everyone probably was thrilled that their kids hopping off to, especially with the reputation that preceded the Grateful Dead.

14:11 What were you like? What, what was the reactions like? What were these concerts like, especially in the East Coast in the in the mid 70s? Because I know that you started showing up, right? The band took a quote UN quote break for 75 pretty much. Yeah. And and then as soon as they got back on, and I think that was those were, I believe, according to Dennis McNally, the coke years, that's when everyone is really getting fond of coke on the scene as opposed to psychedelics. Did that have a difference in the in the concerts and the performances? Did you get that it was a tangible different feel of the crowd? What was that? What was all that like at the time? OK, so #175 I went away to prep school outside Boston my parents would be and starting the next 77, I started going to College in Maine. So I wasn't anywhere near my parents. They were like at the house.

15:10 I used to hitchhike back then to concert. I could go through the concerts I went to and see which ones I hitchhiked with or I'd get a ride. But I, I would go in the late 70s after the break the the Grateful Dead took, I would go to all the shows in New England. And then starting in 77, I went to New York City and English town New Jersey, he states. In upstate New York. I did all that and I continued to, I would I would find more friends with cars and stuff like that. So I would go to as many shows as I could and they typically were on the weekends because of school.

15:52 I would try not to to to take too much. There was a lot of cocaine, but that didn't really wasn't really around more in where I was in Maine or in the Grateful Dead scene maybe till 79 or 80 and probably in the early 80s too when I moved to Berkeley. So I guess you can go back and listen to some of the shows and you can tell when they're like when the dead are like doing coke. No, for sure you can and you can tell. I think it was that Binghamton show that you and I were talking about that that has a really dreamy, Spacey first set that China cat into like this Spacey jam for like, you know, in between. I know China Cat, I know you rider and and you can just see the psychedelic state.

16:51 But I've also noticed on my own trips, like, you know, I've tripped and and listened to a couple. Yeah, I've listened to a show or two and I mean the format of the shows follow the format of a trip almost, almost, almost exactly In Sync. And in the sense that the the shows start at a very happy light mode, you know, throwing a couple of the Bob Weir Westerns that that everyone loves and you know, China Cat and a couple of Berthos and fast moving songs. And then and then, you know, you kind of get as the quote UN quote ego loss happens. Or as you know, the trip kind of comes to a climax. You get dark star or Franklin's or space or drums and you kind of end up all far out and all weird. And then they kind of pull it all together and sing you back home and and the whole and that follows like the step of every of any psychedelic I've ever done. And almost like AT and so it's really cool that they've kind of fashioned the whole the whole set as as one strange trip. That's an interesting take you have. I'm not going to argue with it because I've experienced the same thing and you just think that, wow, this is like done for me.

18:08 You know, the, the, the, the, the shows, especially in the late 70s were like so phenomenal and they were always like, all the songs were different from all this other shows around then. And they would bring songs back. And it's like, that was that was the key era for me as a concert co-owner. You know, it's so interesting because like, OK, so the Dead, I'm just going to tell you, nobody has ever written about this other than me.

18:50 But the Dead were the top concert act as early as 1973. And a lot of that has to do with those big shows they did with The Allman Brothers and the band Watkins Glen Park, a stadium. And when they took a break the next year, when they did the big the big Wallace Sound shows, they couldn't play that many shows. So they weren't even in the top 10 of, of, of artists. But so by the time they came back starting in 76, it took them a few years to become really popular again. And so by 78 and 79, they were in the top five. And then later in the 80s and the 90s, they were often #1 and #2 and what's interesting to me is that over the entire, you know, 2530 year history of the Dead, they were the top grossing concert act in the United States. And of course, I mean, just like sheer number of concerts, times tickets sold because someone like The Rolling Stones would come in every three or four years. And you know, and their average buildings were three or four times as big as the Dead were playing Dead might be 10,000 and they would be paying playing 30 or 40,000 a night. But it's interesting to me that

20:21 people didn't really don't realize how big of a deal the dead were. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really cool. Do you want to take me through the wall of sound, especially from an economic standpoint, because that thing was like glorious and a headache and magical and probably a fortune to deal with. And as you mentioned, they probably they couldn't tour as effectively because of how much a headache. I'm sure that's part of the part of the context, part of the equation. But you want to tell, you want to tell me at least from what you can kind of figure out financially about the wall of sound and what was about? Yeah, I don't have all the information on the Wall of Sound, but no, they spent, they spent a lot of money creating the Wall of Sound.

21:08 And one of the biggest issues were in 73, like I said, they were the top grossing actor in the country. But by creating the Wall of Sound, they were only able to play, instead of playing like 80 shows a year, they're all of a sudden they're playing 40. And a lot of that had to do with the fact that that they had to haul that stuff around and they couldn't play Friday and Saturday in two different cities. So they had they could only they had to take extra day off. And so there was that the dead didn't the dead in 73 because of those giant shows they, they were sell, they sold 13,000 tickets a night.

21:55 And in 74 with the Wall of Sound, they only sold 10 because a lot of those wall of sound shows were in small venues like Winterland. Some of the college gigs they played early in the year. Remember, I looked at this about I looked at this that they, it cost them something like 30 or 40% more to set up the wall of sound and play in any individual they like Springfield Civic Center. So it just it just like they weren't making any more money.

22:37 They were going to sell out these venues anyways. So in my, in my book, there's some, there's some analysis, all the, all, the, all the data that I could find on the wall of the sound, but just there was economically a good decision for them. Yeah, but they did it. They did it for the same reason to do anything else, which is because it's fun or because they felt like it. That was the end of it. You know, I think. I mean, I tried. I tried a little like that. It's really difficult to. But, you know, I think that I think the more you practice it, the better, the easier it is. Yeah. You also noted that the college campuses tended to make more money for the dead as opposed to these other places. Can you explain kind of why that would be? And and they were pretty prolific as far as visiting campuses.

23:26 Oh yeah well, number one, they had a lot of fans that were college students, especially starting in 1970 when they made American Beauty Working man was like totally. The fans were interested in playing, having them come to the campuses. And if you're making a deal at the Fulmore East or the Winterland or like Bill Graham, like these people, I'm telling, like I was telling you before, they're going to pay the debt what they pay them always, you know, 5 grand early on, you know, those kind of things like that. But when you plan at college campuses, you're negotiating with students.

24:08 And so the students don't know how much to charge. And so instead of you getting like 5000 a night, they make sure you might be able to get 10,000 and that. And you see that, you, you see that. And it was pretty normal. Just because they're, they're just not sophisticated and they don't know and they wouldn't get them completely. Most great Grateful Dead managers wouldn't gouge them. But I mean, they're going to make more money playing there. Also, because there was some of their early shows at college campuses in 1971 at Cortland State and then at Yale University in New Haven then those were the biggest shows the Dead ever played up to that point. So it wasn't it was it was in the earlier days. Those were some of the best venues for the band to play out. Were you at?

25:05 Did you get, Did you get to go to the Cornell show, the famous 77 Cornell Show in Ithaca? No, I went to the Boston show the night before. Yeah. And then I've been trying to find people that go that, that that have been there because that was that, that is that might be other than 72. Like the quintessential Dead album is the Cornell one at least the live 1A. Lot of people like it, so yeah. In Boston the day before. So in in 77, because I saw three shows in upstate New York in November at Colgate in Hamilton and Rochester and Binghamton, and among my friends, we thought those shows were better.

26:00 Than Cornell 77. But you know that there's an amazing recording of Col. Cornell. What's also interesting about Cornell is that the debt had a real big dispute with them over over payment. Real big meaning like, I don't know, $100 or something. They went on for a really long time. Really the university didn't want to give it to them or do they claim that? I know that a lot of times people, more people show up at the gate or whatever then, you know, had tickets. It's a famous. On the documents I've seen that it's like there was some dispute over like the cost of some item or you know, whatever.

26:44 But I mean again, nowadays it's like rounding error, but back then. That's the deal. Yeah. Definitely, definitely. And what about what about the Festival Express? Because, and I don't know if you wrote about that or not, but I watched that movie and I remember reading about that book and thinking to myself, Oh my God, like that sounds so cool. How come that doesn't happen more often? And the answer must have been that it was a logistics nightmare or it made no money like everything else that they did. But I mean, something stuck. So I mean that. And I know that that was one of the most, that was one of the most well known trip. You know, it's tours that they took other than, you know, the Europe tour, that tour but and maybe Egypt or whatever.

27:26 But I thought that was crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it, you know, it wasn't really a Dead Dead organized event. It was like a lot of other bands were playing. It's almost like a festival, but they're on a train show in Winnipeg and they played a big show in Toronto like that. And. And they didn't get paid that much because, you know, it's, it's the 60s. Yeah. Like tracking that stuff. There's a few good articles in Canadian newspapers about that torto. Oh really? I bet. I bet they probably don't look at it in the most positive light, right? Whatever, you know, like these hippies came on 30,000 hippies came on to the field and you know. They know what to do with it.

28:15 They know to do with that information what? There's some cool footage of the dead plane acoustic like. Yeah, yeah. Those those early tours, they'd open with that acoustic set and then close the electric one. Yeah, I only, I only saw the dead do that once, so. What the acoustic one? Acoustic set and then two electric sets. When do they do that? Well, it was 80, so it was the IT was the when they did the shows in Warfield and Radio City, and then I did the New Year's Eve show in Oakland. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the other thing that I want to talk to you from the business perspective, at least as far as debt goes, because you said that in the late 60s when the dead really started exploding, I think was 69 was the was 68 or 69 was the.

29:06 Are they really as far as finances and tickets sold really exploded. And one thing that you said that was really relevant or a big first for them was their first major debt to a record label. And I don't think people quite understand how that works, the dynamics and interactions. So if you could explain that, I'd really appreciate it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, a bunch of San Francisco bands started getting record deals. I think it's like 67 or 68, like the first. I think 67 is when the first Grateful Dead record came off and they didn't get paid very much. And I actually have in my book, I actually have all the stuff from the contract, but I, I just don't remember off the top of my head, it's something like $20,000 or not very much.

30:00 And then what, what happened was they recorded the, the record over a period of time. And like every other artist back then, you, you would the, the record label would like make, you have like a make good. So like, OK, you owe us 60,000 now because you spent that much on studio time and you only made and including the 25,000 or whatever. And so it's like nobody would ever make any money off those unless you were Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young or Led Zeppelin who would make a fuck load of money.

30:46 These other artists didn't. And so the Dead didn't really start making money till about till American Beauty and and working man Deads came out and then Europe 72. They figured out ways to start making money. And then in the late 80s when they made that, that album in the 80's, the album A Touch of Grey on it, that's when they really started like getting advances and making a lot of money. But a lot of that that I have information on everything that I have is in my book. So when you base so so now if I'm the dead in the in the late 60s and I owe the record company, I owe them 60 grand.

31:28 I pay them back by touring, I pay them back by making another album. How do I how do I pay? How do I pay this back? Only paying back by selling more albums, making more albums and then when the contract's done in three or four years, it basically gets written off, goes away. So then if. You were in that it doesn't stay forever. So it's, it's a little bit complicated and it wasn't like they owed them the money. It's just that we're not going to pay you any more money until, until you sell more albums. So that way they get like they they can latch on to the next 345 albums or something. Gotcha.

32:14 So record deal is not all. The is not is not the end all be all as far as financial freedom goes. No, but I mean, because there's just so few artists that made money off records even even today it's like that. They make it off touring and the Dead, that's why the Dead toured, you know, 80 * a year for 30 years. So. Well, I mean, I'm sure it was because. Yeah. And I and I, and I wonder at what percentage of that time was because they had to and what percent of the time because they wanted to, you know, but. Percent because they wanted to maybe and when they're having issues with Garcia and his substance abuse problems, maybe they didn't want it to.

33:01 He didn't want to tour as much, but. Yeah, yeah. I think he was sick and tired of being the the Jerry Garcia that we know him as today and wanted to be the little bluegrass Jerry Garcia that that he was in the early days. But you know, we can't. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, unfortunately. What do you what do you think of John Mayer and Deneco? I saw I've seen Deneco maybe like 6 or 7 times starting in 2015 when they started and the last two shows I saw were at the Spear in 2024. What do you think?

33:41 I think John is an excellent guitar player. And I just kind of like, I'm an old guy. I like listening to my old Dead shows, you know, as more. But I mean, it was fun to take a bunch of people who had never seen members of the Grateful Dead like my wife so. Yeah, what do you think of the Sphere as a venue? Oh, it's very fun. I thought it was great. I saw two shows there so I was lucky. I would love to part of the sphere, so sorry. From two different parts of the sphere. I saw one show from like near the stage and one in the second level. Would you like more?

34:30 I don't know, I like them both. You're like, well, that's a good answer. I would love to go see. I would love to go see those shows and and I think you're right, yeah. I don't spend a ton of time listening to dad and Co. They're a different pace for me than I think I would. I would like in general, and, but I think John Mayer, whenever it's funny, it's hard. It's harder for me to listen to him jam than it's much easier for me to watch him jam. I, you know, I picked up the guitar a couple of years ago from becoming a Deadhead, obviously. And, and it's, and, and to watch him really is a source of inspiration. I know that. And there are thousands of stories of, of bad trips that have been rescued as a result of just sitting there and watching Jerry, Jerry playing on his, on his guitar. So I think that, you know, regardless of the tempo or the pace of your preference, he carries that that spirit of this, this magician that's just talking with, it's just talking to you for and laughing, you know, then the guitars have different sounds.

35:32 I feel like Jerry's guitar always had like a little laughed here, a little sense of humor, like a little. And again, that might be just me anthropomorphizing, but that's what it always feels like to me at least. You know, it's interesting. I, I respect John for everything he did to the dead scene, but I also got to see John play with Bobby. Rest in peace, Bobby. Where? Yeah, rest in peace, man. Cheers to him man. Here in at the Greek, which is 5000 people at the Greek LA in the park and he, John Mayer sat in for the second set of one of those Wolf Brothers shows with Bobby. I think it's 22.

36:20 So those were the last three shows I saw two at the Spear and this one that one so. Yeah, we need a Bob. Bobby Weir is always, always weird, Always, always, always. It's funny. And like if you take his this style music that you would play and write, it didn't always necessarily fit in the way that you would imagine. And I love that little story that you did reference about how he and Pigpen shortly got fired from the band in the in the late 60s, early 70s. And it's just so funny to think about because looking back, like what would have happened and how they even came to that conclusion, you know, But they like it's everyone, you know, they're basically myths at this point. They're basically legends at this point. And they're not.

37:08 People talk about them like they all know them at the time. They're a 20 year old just playing music together and just figured like, hey, man, like, you know, like we're not, you know, we're not, we're not digging this right now. And you know, we'll try to get in the future maybe. But they're just people at the end of the day. You know, I think Bobby, if that if they would have got, you know, 1968, whatever it was, they wouldn't have been a member of the Grateful Dead. After that, Bob Weir would have played some bunch of other bands like he did. That's. Right. I've seen so many bands. Rat Dog, the Bob Weir Band, he wrote some. He wrote some great songs on those other albums that aren't Dead albums.

37:49 I love it. Oh yeah, I didn't even know though. I don't know his songs from the Not Dead ones. I have to check them out if you if you want to let me know a few. My estimated profit might be my favorite for that. My favorite. My favorite that he wrote. I love estimated profit. Yeah, I remember when the estimated profit, when I first saw it, it's like they would just play it in like the middle of the first set or whatever, just a little 5 minutes. So they did a good job with that song. Yeah. It's fun to see and actually I was talking about this to another guy I was talking to recently. I don't even remember who it was because I talked to too many people, but I but I was talking about how when I listen to when you, especially when you're following a band, you could listen to the Dead or Springsteen or Dylan or anyone that has a lot of bootleg recordings and you could see snippets of their future songs in the in the years leading up to it and where the songs are coming from and the bare bones and, and what the influences were.

38:49 And one thing I did notice was with so much fun and what makes what made the the experience is probably so much fun too, was that the dead were always playing with different genres in the same night. There, you know, there often would be 234 bands playing and they would mix up the genres like crazy. I mean, you'd have some Blues, you'd have some rock, you'd have some, some other San Francisco bands, you'd have some pop rock, a Fleetwood Mac. So you know, I mean, there's some really cool. So I, so you you pick up a lot of other musical influences while you're there. Before I wrote this book, I I I wrote my blog on the Dead called Grateful Seconds Blogs.

39:32 It's up. I have over 500 pieces up there over a year period. And just like I was like, here are the cool shows that with Bobby doing something, or here are here are here are my favorite shows from 1977 or whatever. And so I really, I really studied, I really studied the, the, the well, I've been, I've been studying them for 40 years, so 50 years now. 50 years is crazy, 50 years is amazing. And it's going to, it's going to keep on going. I'm excited to see what what happens. But the music never stops as far as, as far as, as far as they're concerned.

40:13 And and that's, that's what's awesome. They created a real world that just, they created a little Organism that just continues. And it's this little spirit that just keeps on going and it influences everyone in all sorts of crazy ways. It's really, really cool. I want to actually, so at the end of your so late 80s, you stop going to these shows, you decide to start growing up a little bit and, you know, growing old going up and you decide and, and, and you, you have a career in the entertainment finance industry. How did that happen? And how did you even go about finding that, especially because I imagine that that kind of job is for someone from LA, you know, that that was in the entertainment scene their whole lives. And then they say, you know what, I'm more of a money guy than a creative guy.

41:01 And so I want to do this. How do you guy from from from Massachusetts end up doing this? Well, in 87 I had been living in the Bay Area and, and after the Dylan Dead show at the, at the Oakland Coliseum and one show at in, in, at Palo Alto in at Stanford, I'm I, I moved to LA and went to UCLA Business School and I studied entertainment management And in 89 I started working at one entertainment company. And then in 95 I started working for investment bank and then the last 10 years of my career I worked for a private equity company all having to do pretty much with what the value of films and film assets. So like here, like if you're looking at the value of Grateful Deads catalog of shows, how many do they out a year? How many do they sell?

42:09 If they were to sell those, what would they worth? It's the same kind of thing where like for various reasons, I would look at a bunch of Warner Brothers movies from a certain year that are going to be in a transaction between one company and another. And and I would value what they're worth because I became an expert at that. And then when I was started working in private equity, we started acquiring rights. So we would, we'd like somebody might own a 10% interest in Stallone, might own a bunch of interest in his movies. And he's decided he wants to sell that off because he's going to stop being making any movies and move to Florida. So I mean, that's the ample and it's like there are many examples like that.

42:59 So that was my, my expertise was knowing what, what film rights are worth. You know, we, you made $10 million last year, maybe you'll make 5 billion this year. And I guess it's simple. Simple. A similar mindset to how I analyze the Grateful Dead. Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, you could tell, you could definitely see it. I, I, I happen to love the film world. And so I would love to understand a little bit more about this, because I know, for example, that sequels always, almost always make more than the originals, even though they're almost never as good. So if you're going to be a private equity company or, or you're a bank that's going to finance a movie and a studio comes to you and says, hey, we did put Toy Story 1 grossed XY and Z 500 million some whatever it was, you know, and now we want to make a Toy Story 2. You take you, I'm sure you take into account the, the history of the audience.

44:00 And do you assume that it's going to make more money based on, based on the fact that this is a trend or how much of this is guesswork based on trends? Or you know what? What? How do you how do you determine a movie's value? Well, I have the economics of movies, millions of them, because I've looked at them, so I know how much money they make, Make in theaters. Used to be on DVDs and then it was like. That was a huge market, right? And like that, right? And when we got into buying our own movies, we would never buy them before they're released because that's too variable.

44:44 You don't know if they're going to do 50 million or 100 million or whatever. So we would always buy them after. So that was it just because. And it was really interesting because it was just really a bunch of smart guys that I've known my entire career. And they came up with this concept that we could we could buy these movies or pieces of movies. Usually it was pieces, usually like a director or an actor or something and and that kind of thing. So, but you would never be able to buy a piece of Toy Story 2 because Disney knows 100. Percent.

45:27 Big money. So they don't need anyone to finance that. They don't want to share profits. So a lot of times early on it would be companies that are trying to like pull some bullshit or you know, or so it's just it's interesting to find the right people to buy movies off of and that kind of. Thing well, I imagine like I knew you mentioned briefly, but that the DVD sales were were real, real money makers. So, so I'm sure that there were hedge funds, I guess investment banks, Oregon hedge funds that would buy just for the, just for the after DVD market, you know, so the movie opens in theaters or it's a romantic. And the other thing I also am curious, do you keep in mind how, how exactly if a movie, let's say a movie cost $20 million to make and opens to 8,000,000 for the opening weekend, how do you know if that movie is going to make money or not?

46:29 Oh, there's, there's kind of formulas that you can tell if it's a certain kind of movie, it's going to either decline by so much or so much more. It's all it's all mathematical like that. But we like I said, it's hard to it's hard to value those movies when they're only been out for one week too. So it's value them six months later. It depends what you're trying to do exactly. But like right now, because I, I kind of retired around COVID, I don't think there's even any DVD. No, but now it's streaming rights. Yeah, so that's that's that's actually good and bad. But the good part is that, OK, so like some movie comes out centers and now it's on HBO Max, It's be streaming there for like two or three years.

47:30 So you can kind of get it. You can. That's the that's the predominant domestic revenue over the next few years. It's really big stuff. But I mean, I'm retired now, so I don't, I'm not, I'm not like up to speed on the most. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm curious because I think it's a really, really cool. I think it's, I don't think a lot of people think about the fact that there are banks that finance movies. I know, for example, I believe that James Cameron is famous for taking out a lot of loans outside of the studio to develop the technologies that he wants for his, for his movies. And so, you know, that's when he goes to the studio and says, OK, I need as much of a budget as you're willing to give me. And they say, OK, I'll give you $250 million. Then he goes to a hedge fund or he goes to investment bank. It says, hey, I got $250 million from the studio. I need double that.

48:26 You know, I need double that for the next couple of years to make a movie that. He might get it, he might get it, he might get it that because he's so has been so successful. Yeah, yeah. That's that's the point. But it seems like such a like that it's just someone like just just saying, hey, watch like some of your great movies. And I see the numbers are great. And so you know what, yeah, here's $500 million. Good luck. Have a good, you know, hire, go, go hire a city for five years and, and make something happen. And, and he does. That's, that's the cool part. I mean, I, I think that all those movies have at least the Avatar movies. I think this third one opened over a billion. Granted I think it was a five day weekend, but I mean they all is all they they all three avatars have cost a billion already. I think it was 25 years ago when Titanic came out. I think around that and my firm at the time, we we tried to do a deal with Fox to like it was to ensure the performance of that movie along with some other movies. And it went all the way up the chain and the company and they're like, OK, we'll do this deal. We'll do this deal.

49:34 We want to ensure it. We want to make sure it does OK. They didn't know how well it's going to do and went up to Rupert Murdoch, who was the head of May still be the head of Fox. I think he is. And he looked at the deal and he said, you know what, we're we're in the business to take risks. We're going to business to take risks. So he didn't do the deal with us. So we didn't make several $1,000,000. Wow. Amazing, amazing. That's crazy. And how did they hire people to that that were like in the film world or had the quote UN quote artistic perspective or they were just purely about the about the bottom line and try to make it about as scientific as possible? Well, all the companies I worked for over the years, I gained more and more experience, like 30 years. And like we all, we always use the same people and like, we, we, we, we were pretty quantitative about it. It was also good that I saw the movies. It's the same way with the dead with, you know, it helps in my book that I, I saw the dead 82 times. I saw Garcia 100 times.

50:44 I saw we are 102 times. You know it that it just it helps when you have a real interest in a subject for me. Yeah, definitely. The initial basis and it was the same way in the in the movie business. Yeah, I heard that. I heard that horror movies are the real money makers of Hollywood, that they're so cheap to produce, to create and produce and, and the and and, and they're very consistent with the at least with the theatre performances. And I know that the theatre performance only has, you know, there's only one capat one category of ways to make money. As far as as far as films go, again, you talk about streaming rights or DVDs or down the road or whatever it is. But but I've heard that that the horror movies in particular were really are really studios bread and butter as far as as reliability and money is concerned. That's kind of true because horror movies are so inexpensive to make.

51:48 You know, you're filming out in the woods in a cabin, you know, whatever, that's your movie and you can movie that way. And there are people like Bloomhouse that I think work with the Universal and they're just like they're, they're just have such a track record up with these inexpensive ideas that can, that can perform like any other studio movie. Yeah, and they typically do not depend on big star names that are big, you know, big director names that you have to that you have to really budget for. And it's a shame because I mean, you think back to 2000 and seven, 2008, when the superhero movies were that genre of movies where they were like, listen, it wouldn't cost that much. Robert Downey Junior was a gamble, you know, and you didn't know what you're going to get with him and and you didn't know what you're going to get with what's his name, Jon Favreau. And, and it worked and now you now every movie, I mean, I can't even imagine what percentage of the budget just goes to, just goes to names, just goes to signatures and names and faces on screen that you know, you recognize relative to what the what the movie actually could be. Yeah, that that concept, it goes in and out like star driven movies or or other movies without stars, but you have a pretty good sense for a guy down Florida. Thank you, thank you very much.

53:19 I try to keep myself updated on this stuff. I love this stuff. I mean, because I've always been I've always been into music and movies and I've always wanted to kind of work in them in some capacity. And the truth is that this podcast really gives me the opportunity to free to freelance and learn about as much about it as I as I as I can and kind of spread that information just because I love there's so much fascinating stuff behind the scenes. And it's, and again, even just in economic history is just such a great way to just take a step back and objectively look, forget about the reputation, forget about the music, forget about the drugs, forget about the crowds. Let's just talk about you can take a literal look at the paper trail. Although I didn't want to bring up everything was freaking off the books then and everything was cash then.

54:03 So like, how much can you really even depend depend on the on the books? That's true. I don't know how much, especially when it's like cash from the from the box office at that show that night. I don't know how many you. I think the only thing is like they know how much the tickets are and they know me tickets are selling and you're selling out it. By the time you're selling out every night, you can't really like fudge it too much. But early on, if you want to say only 3000 people paid, not 5000, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. But I even put the and I don't, I don't know whether they're still flies or not, but their girlfriends and wives and everything on payroll and on salary. And I mean, I can't even imagine what doing their accounting or or any kind of bookkeeping looked like. Yeah, well, continue reading through my book, You'll you'll come across some like, Grateful Dead corporate financial statements.

55:07 They're kind of interesting to me. They're fascinating too, because like you said, you don't know how much you can rely on, you know? Yeah, awesome. Well, I think this is awesome. I'm going to put the link to your book up on the site and to your blog, I hope. But Dave Davis, thank you so much for hopping on last minute, making this really quick but quick turn around. This is such a pleasant conversation and great Bobby Weirman and keep keep on, keep on trucking man. Thanks. Thank you Efren, have a nice. Day hopping on. All the best man, take care.